RAW - a waste of time

[StuartR]

I've just read an interview with photographer Tom Ang in What Digital Camera. I've seen Tom on TV, enjoyed articles by him in several magazines, read at least two of his books and have respect for his work, so I was looking forward to reading his views on a number of topics.

Not too many surprises save his view on RAW. "I don't work with RAW because I think it's a waste of time - I'm fortunate in having a camera that provides a lot of headroom for manipulation"

He uses an EOS 1Ds MkII and I guess 16.7 MP full-frame jpg files are pretty good? Doubt I'll ever have one to find out for myself . I just assumed pros would always shoot RAW. You live & learn!

Guess it would depend, to a degree, on the type of photography though? - I can understand not using RAW for newspaper reporting or some magazine content but for serious landscape or fashion work I'd assumed RAW would be king?

[DTD]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

It is surprising, but if it works for him…
Did he say if he used JPEGs or TIFFs?

[Stephen]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

I've not read the article, but if he is advocating that using Raw is a waste of time in general then I think he is being somewhat mischievous in his statement. Either that or he doesn't really understand Raw. I can assure you though that using a 1DsMk2 does not negate the need/benefits of using Raw.

[StuartR]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

He didn't say - I assumed JPGS as I thought RAW & JPG were the only formats the camera writes?* - unless you meant convert the JPG output to TIFF of course, to stop any further degradation when editing. Which is what I'd do although I'd convert from RAW not JPG!

*I'm guessing Stephen has the said camera and can put me right on this point.

[Stephen]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

*I'm guessing Stephen has the said camera and can put me right on this point.

Though I use a 1DMk2N, the 1Ds is the same in terms of file types, and you are right about those. Raw, Raw+jpeg or jpeg only.

[Ian]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

I've not read the article, but if he is advocating that using Raw is a waste of time in general then I think he is being somewhat mischievous in his statement. Either that or he doesn't really understand Raw. I can assure you though that using a 1DsMk2 does not negate the need/benefits of using Raw.

Getty photographer, David Alan Harvey, told me when I interviewed him for Digital Camera magazine, last year, that he aimed to get the JPEG absolutely right in the camera, so it was the benchmark, but he shot RAW with the JOEG and whoever needed the RAW file would then process the RAW file to match the JPEG.

I am surprised if Tom Ang's comments are interpreted as that he doesn't shoot RAW at all, though I wonder if he shoots RAW and JPEG but doesn't bother, personally, to spend time processing the RAW files.

Ian

[devilgas]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

i can understand the point about RAW being a "waste of time" as they do add a significant amount of time to the workflow compared to downloading & processing simple JPG files.
conceivably, there should be little difference between a correctly exposed JPG and a correctly exposed (and pp sharpened) RAW, which is great if you have the time to get the shot set up in the first instance.

probably said this a few times before, but i shoot RAW where the importance demands it. this typically means any commercial work and the 300 or so photos i'll take at a rugby game. for rallying, i always shoot JPG as there'll usually be 1000+ photos and i'm too lazy to spend several hours downloading that lot from numerous cards and batch converting.
for rally photos, i'll fly the camera totally manual and therefore tend to get the exposure setup before the first car appears. with rugby it's different. i'm legging it up and down the touch line with light conditions changing continually. flying fully manual isn't that great a prospect! the cam is always in Av mode and shooting RAW gives me the flexibility of gaining upto 3 stops (where necessary), with little noise increase. this would be hard to achieve with JPG.
sure, RAW can be seen as a chicken switch / safety net / "it doesn't matter if i get it wrong" but if it's there, why not use it?

[Bearface]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

Tom Ang, as respected as he might be, is but one individual. If he wants people reading his interview to believe that the use of RAW is a waste of time, then either he knows something that many of us don't or he's simply being dogmatic. Or he was quoted out of context...

I shoot stock images on a contracted, project basis. When I started doing this on a large scale, I had a Nikon D1x and had been shooting high-quality JPEGs for some time when Stephen (one of the Mods here) persuaded me to try RAW. To cut a long and tedious story short, I tried it and despite the increase to my workflow (which was and remains pretty significant), the flexibility and control which RAW gave me over colour temperature and the balance of my exposures was such that the additional time factor was easily countered by the final results, which were measurably better than when I'd used JPEGs. My clients noticed this too, so from then I stuck with it.

Since my "conversion" (thanks Stephen ), I've moved over to Canon via the 1Ds, the 1D MkII and the 5D. On several occasions I've had to shoot up to five-hundred images each day and the temptation to switch to JPEG (to save on card space more than anything...) has sometimes been too great. However without fail, while I've generally been perfectly happy with the JPEGS I've taken, the quality has definitely been diluted considerably by the camera's processing alogarithms and the files are much harder to work with in Photoshop, which in my business is very much a part of the process. Because of this, I purchased a 40GB pocket hard-drive and more CF cards and vowed to stick to shooting in RAW, at least until something comparable or better comes along.

If people are taking family snaps or shooting lower-res stuff such as web images, then JPEGs are fine and indeed the quality can be excellent. If however you're seeking out the optimum quality, detail and colour balance in your shots, RAW is by far the better option of the two.

[Ian]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

I must admit that in the early days I found RAW really hard work. The original Adobe Camera Raw converter in Photoshop CS (the version before CS2) was quite poor and all the other tools, especially camera manufacturer ones, were pretty rough, too. I even wrote a humorous editorial poking fun at people rushing into the fad that was RAW . But I was fortunate to be landed with some excellent RAW conversion tools to try for an article I was commissioned to write, including Phase One's Capture One, the distantly related Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials (which has since been acquired by Adobe for beefing up Lightroom) and Photoshop CS2's much-improved ACR. These transformed my opinion of RAW and I now shoot RAW+JPEG routinely. I usually shoot sRGB JPEGs for the convenience of viewing and printing on media that aren't RAW-compatible, especially the Internet. If I need Adobe RGB quality or intensive processing for quality purposes, the RAW file is there.

Tools like Aperture and Lightroom are making RAW even more accessible and useful. JPEG is fine for many things, but the transform process, event at the highest quality setting, does lose information and you are also limited to the camera's interpretation of the lighting of the scene - and even the sharpening of the image.

Ian

[DTD]

Re: RAW - a waste of time

I always use RAW. My last camera (Oly C5060 – won on this very forum!) also gave you the option to shoot as TIFFs which I did. To me there seem too many advantages to RAW not to use it.
As Ian said Aperture and Lightroom make RAW a lot more accessible.
Cards are getting bigger and cheaper which takes away another of JPEGs advantages.